'Raw With Love' by Malak El Halabi
Original text in French.
30 July 2020
A forceful poetry collection by award winning poet Malak El Halabi
Raw, like the first kiss that sent shudders down your spine, leaving you perplexed and wandering.
Raw, like your salty tears when you let them flow freely down your face, liberating your soul like a purgatory.
Raw, like your anger that burns and tumbles down walls.
Raw because this world does its best to tame us, over and over again. And to teach us, in every possible way, to think twice, always twice, before being who we unapologetically are.
Raw because feelings should be said and written bluntly as they are. Raw because thoughts and words should never be sugarcoated or twisted to conform. Not now. Not in this life. Not in a million thousand years.
Raw with Love is an intense poetry collection about the Bermuda triangle of lust, love and loss. The book is divided into three chapters, with each chapter being both a knife and an open wound.
Raw with Love takes you on a journey, through every single hidden emotion, leaving you drenched with water, gasping for air at its shore when you finally put it down.
It is a poetry collection but it is first and foremost a call for freedom. The freedom to love, to lust for and to experience loss in whichever way we want. Without hiding behind a veil. Or a mask. Or beneath words that mollify your feelings. It is a cry to liberate language and to heal human experiences, especially in the Arab world, from taboos and from the stigma of what should be said and what shouldn't.
About the Author
Malak El Halabi is a Lebanese published poet and a consumer behavior expert, currently pursuing her PhD in Consumer Behavior in France. Born in Beirut, Lebanon, on October 1, 1992, Malak began writing poems at a very early age.
Poetry became her ally before she was able to complete her own sentences. She published her first poetry book in Arabic “My God is Love and my Religion is You” at the age of 17. The book ranked second in the sales of the Beirut Arab Book Fair. In 2011, her second poetry book “Samir”, dedicated to the memory of her father, was published, dealing with the themes of death and grief. After 2011, Malak switched from writing in Arabic to writing in English. Her poems are featured in "Dubai Poetics", "Thought Catalog", and several online platforms. Her poem “23” won the third prize in the IE Humanities Award 2016 for which the award ceremony took place during the Hay Festival of Segovia, Spain. Her poem “Insomnia” won the second prize in the IE Humanities Award 2018.
